


The Sunrise in Jerusalem

by Monotropic



Category: Hellsing
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 01:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2604302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monotropic/pseuds/Monotropic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Though you are practically omnipotent you still sought out a new God in Abraham and any human who showed the pride and courage that exists nowhere in you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sunrise in Jerusalem

**Author's Note:**

> Unedited atm, and written over 2 years ago :V

A long, low wail echoed through the burning carcass of London. It spread wings over the blackened ribs of the city, traveling to the very top of the blazing needle of Big Ben and swooping down low over the mirror-still Thames. But despite being carried an astonishing distance, nobody heard it. Not a man, nor dog, nor monster, heard the desperate keen of a child waking up alone in the house. No bloody ghoul lifted its head to the howl; no orphan crept out of their hiding spot to curiously pinpoint its epicenter.

All of London was an empty pit.

Alucard’s howl died away, but the pain that had caused it remained. He got unsteadily to his feet, his fist pressed into his stomach, attempting to grind away the steady ache there. He had woken and felt as if a lance of holy silver had been pushing its way into his gut, a pain so great that it had shattered his tolerances. But the searing burn had dulled and was instead a constant throb that he could handle.

He took a few steps and his knees buckled. He hit the ground hard, sending a shock up his legs and making him grunt through his teeth. Instead of returning to his feet, Alucard took in his surroundings while he waited for his thighs to stop shaking.

The piles of corpses were gone. The forest of the impaled had vanished, leaving only the pikes standing alone. There was no frothing blood in the gutters, or in the streets; Alucard looked at his white gloves and saw that they were clean and he didn’t remember that. The houses that had been burning were still burning, and the zeppelin was lying crumpled down the road, and the windows of the buildings looming high over him were punched out and gaped like mouths with broken teeth.

There were no people. Alucard inhaled and let the hot, dry air of London wash over his tongue. He tasted ash and burning wood and the gases leaking from the zeppelin, but no blood or decay. He couldn't sense Seras anywhere nearby. He couldn’t smell anything. Not a human or wandering ghoul or even another vampire. He stretched his senses to their limits, searching London, and found nothing.

His master was gone, her only remnant a sword stuck directly into the battlefield, ruining its blade and preserving her memory.

Alucard walked up to the sword, inspecting it. Despite watching Integra slice through several foes and paint its blade red, it was almost spotless. He reached out and touched the hilt, sending a shock up his arm to feel that it was real and true and not an illusion. He jerked his hand back, curling it to his chest as if it was injured.

“Master?” Alucard stared at the sword in growing horror. He looked up at the broken, empty windows and actually felt a twinge of anxiety. “Master!?”

London took his cry and threw it back at him, mocking him. _Master_ echoed all around him, a thousand times over, growing louder and louder until all he could hear was his own pitiful voice calling for his master like a lost dog.

_What’s the matter? Can’t go two steps without her there? Do you need someone to hold your hand?_

Alucard snarled, baring his teeth at the unseen voice who tried to wheedle panic into his heart. He whirled around, feeling their breath on the back of his neck. But he saw nothing behind him but the bare expanse of the battlefield and the rubble of the buildings that that crumbled in the wake of the attack.

Suddenly in that open area, with the sword at its center, Alucard felt very exposed. He felt as if he were kneeling and not standing, his neck exposed passively, waiting for something sink its teeth into his jugular. His flight reflex was triggered, and he found himself running from that open battlefield, into the nearest building. He jumped in through a broken window, a shard of glass snagging on his coat and tearing a hole in the sleeve.

Laughter followed Alucard as he ran deeper into the dark building, away from the windows and the sight of the open area that gave him such a feeling of terror and powerlessness. Hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he found a room where the exposed feeling wasn’t as strong; a dark room with no windows. He backed into a corner, leaning against the wall, pressing his spine against it in an attempt to calm his mind and think.

Whatever was out there had made him run. Had made him hide. Alucard clenched his fists, a low growl rising in his throat. He trapped the growl against the back of his teeth at the last second, knowing no matter how humiliated he felt it wouldn’t be wise to alert whatever was out there to his hidey-hole.

Normally he would have confronted this foe head-on, but he was unsettled. Jolted. He had expected a fiery hell.

 _Though I suppose this could be that_ , he thought.

He had been fighting. Alucard’s mind was jumbled and foggy, but he remembered that. He had sailed into London and been given permission for a full release. But when he tested his abilities he found himself weak, so weak, so something had happened. He couldn’t feel his familiars. He reached for them and found an abyss that he dipped his mind into and nearly fell deep down into it.

Pulling back abruptly, Alucard considered this development.

He had been fighting Walter. Yes. He remembered that too. At first he thought he had been fighting the Judas, but no – he had defeated the paladin. The memory of that nail sent a twist of _something_ in his gut. Alucard was sure it was some kind of intense sadness but didn’t dwell on it. He had mourned a worthy enemy already and didn’t have the luxury of that now.

But _Walter_. He had been fighting Walter. The twist in his gut became worse and it was actually making the pain that was already there more intense somehow. Alucard grunted and ground his fist into his stomach again, willing the pain away. He tasted metal at the back of his throat. _But_ then something else had happened – he did not remember dying. He did not remember any significant gush of blood that was unlike any other gush of blood, none that signaled the ending of his unlife. Alucard was almost certain that he could not die by any normal means.

_But it wasn’t normal, was it? You greedy little thing you ate a quantum theory itself and where did that get you?_

His muscles clenched, but it seemed as if the voice did not bring with it the other thing. The feeling of being watched by something that viewed him as prey, a concept he hadn’t felt in a long time, was apparently separate. They were different entities.

“Who are you?” he murmured softly, hoping that it did not prick the ears of whatever lay out in the battlefield.

The room was dark, impossibly so, even to his sensitive eyes, but Alucard was able to see a small form approach him. He fought the urge to bare his teeth as his blood began to rush; this world made him feel uncharacteristically threatened. He was weak and cornered and there wasn’t time for him to consider his wounded pride.

Two large, blank white eyes opened and looked up at him. The figure had teeth like needles, and a highlight of red shone on its features despite the darkness. _You seem awfully good at hiding. Your natural place, maybe?_

Alucard stepped forward, a hand coming up to grab the figure around its neck. His fingers clasped on air. His left boot came down on a weak point in the floor and the wooden panels splintered. He almost fell through, leaping back at the last second, but the damage was done. A sharp crack echoed through the empty building, and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end as a demonic roar of anger and triumph made the floor quake violently.

_Run dog._

_Run._

Bolting through the rooms, Alucard put the voice out of his mind. Retreat wasn’t the most glorious of options, but it was the wisest at the moment, when he wasn’t above running. Arrogance had ruined him before with Abraham, when he stood his ground and sought out a foe greater than he. He had willingly destroyed himself that time, he had had the privilege of serving only his own whim to ride the psychotic horse towards that particular burning stable. Now he did not. He had to find his master and get back to her if he could. He had to keep himself alive.

It helped that he did not want to fight this enemy. Not when it made him feel so small and weak; not when he was as powerless as bottom-feeding scum in this empty London.

The roaring died away, and the floor stilled beneath his feet, but he continued running. He could feel something staring at his back, chasing him, even if he could not hear them crashing through the hallways behind him.

The hallway he was running on was coming to an end. Alucard paused for a moment, unsure of whether or not he could still phase through solid matter; the foe behind him was bearing down on him though, and instead of wasting time testing it he kicked down the door in front of him and ran into a room that contained two windows.

He threw up his arms in front of his face to protect him against the glass and leapt through one of the windows.

It was ten stories up, but it was surrounded by other, shorter buildings. He fell a dozen feet and landed on a flat roof, the landing sending painful reverberations up his legs.

_Too weak to levitate or even stick the landing._

Alucard continued to run, finding that while he couldn’t levitate he could still jump a considerable distance. He leapt from rooftop to rooftop, trying to outrun whatever snapped at his heels, having the sinking sensation of its hands closing around him.

He slipped into an alleyway, the landing making his knees ache, and immediately pressed himself into another blasted corner, hiding in the deep shadows it offered. His right foot rested on a hefty slab of rubble, which he picked up and threw into the trashcans at the end of the alley. They crashed to the ground and Alucard waited quietly for his first glimpse of whatever was chasing him.

But nothing came. Alucard looked up and saw no hint of a pursuer. The anxiety faded away and his muscles relaxed, leaving only the pain in his stomach. It had been getting steadily worse as he ran, and now it was once again as worse as it had been in the beginning. It felt like holy water was burning through his insides, passing all of his pain tolerances and making him tremble. He stuck his fingers in his mouth to keep from howling, biting down on them as the pain reached its peak and started to fade.

He coughed up a significant amount of blood as the pain dulled. It splashed onto the ground, bright red against the black tar. He wiped his mouth and chin and walked to the edge of the alley, slowly, keeping his steps quiet when in the past he would haven’t even required conscious thought to do so.

At the front of the alley was the figure, branching off from a shadow, its white eyes shining like lamps. Alucard could see some of its features now. They were familiar. A section of memory sloughed away and he remembered.

A quantum theory. An unnatural death for an unnatural creature.

 _But you’re not really dead, are you?_ The figure exposed a half moon row of its horrible teeth in a macabre grin. _Just invisible. Invisible numbers. We don’t exist and neither does anyone else._

“I have to get back,” Alucard said. He licked his own blood from his lips and stepped closer to the demonic figure. “You know how. Tell me how to get back.” He reached out to grab the figure and this time it let him.

_You have to kill them all. Destroy your familiars and regain yourself, Vampire King. You have been millions of others for hundreds of years, molding to the will of your surroundings and your masters. You became cloyed with far too many. You must start anew._

“But there is no one here,” Alucard said. He stretched out his senses again to make sure, but he could barely reach passed the alley. Even so, he knew what he had felt that first time, the emptiness of London. There hadn’t been a spark of life or movement anywhere. “I would know if they were here.”

The figure laughed in his face. _You have been_ running _from one of them! You caught one whiff of your own power and_ you ran from it _! How pathetic are you!_

Alucard snarled and crushed its neck in his hand, sneering when he saw that he still had at least a fraction of his strength. The figure continued to laugh at him though, and when it melted away back into the shadows he could still hear the echo of it mocking him in his ears. He leaned against the wall of the alley, hunching his shoulders up.

He liked who he was.

He liked the souls within him. He liked being adaptable. It had kept him alive over the years; the absence of it had gotten his head cut off by the Ottomans. His ability to shape himself to Abraham and Arthur and Integral had made things easier for him when they all expected drastically different things from their vampire.

Of course he pined for death and the idea that he had to continue on even after all this frustrated him to no end. Over five hundred years and he had accepted death, welcomed it even. And now he was _here_ which was worse than _there_ and he still hadn’t been given the boon of a sunrise yet. Alucard doubted he ever would now.

But how else would he be able to leave if he did not continue on?

Stepping out into the street, Alucard looked from side to side, scanning it. There were several cars in the road. One had crashed into a streetlight, and the others were simply abandoned, their occupants having fled at the sight of the invasion. His boots crunched as he walked over the broken and blue glass of what had to be the flung remains of the crashed car’s shattered windshield.

He stopped abruptly. Sitting in the passenger’s seat of one of the abandoned cars was a man. A man familiar on a very subconscious level. He looked freshly dead. His skin carried a sickly hue, the very first shades of blue appearing on his cracked lips and the edges of his cheekbones. There was a thin white film over his eyes, which were locked on Alucard and followed him as he approached.

His neck was mangled and torn. Bloodless flesh was split open to reveal the tube of his throat and the thick blue cord of his jugular in quick snatches. Alucard could taste his blood on the back of his tongue, and remembered. Oh he remembered. Aside from the ripped skin, Alucard could see deep bite marks in the muscles of his neck, from his own past savagery and anger; his teeth would fit in there almost perfectly.

Jonathan opened the passenger door without taking his eyes off him, tracking Alucard’s path to the side of the car. He did not blink. His mouth was set with extreme hate. He stepped out of the car and stood, holding his back straight, his shoulders set aggressively. He still wore his clothes from that day, with dried brown blood stiffening the slip of white shirt at his chest and mud caked on the knees of his pants from his last moments kneeling in the dirt with the vampire he had been chasing.

“Count.” Harker’s voice was hoarse, explained by the fact that his last words had been screamed. And by the rooster wattle of torn skin hanging down from his chin. “Fancy meeting you in perdition.”

“This isn’t perdition,” Alucard said stupidly, and bit his tongue for speaking so easily in front of an old enemy. Especially an old enemy he had deemed unworthy of his interests, eaten, and forgotten in favor of his wife.

“It might not be for you,” Harker said, spitting his words. A thin line of blood appeared on his bottom lip, bubbling up from somewhere in his ruined throat. “But we have been here for an eternity. Oh but it’s not hell for _you_ so it must not be hell for the hapless bastards you swallowed and left here to stew in their own insanity.”

He stepped up to Alucard and sneered. His teeth were pitted and black. He was nearly a foot shorter than Alucard but somehow they were eye to eye. “Where is your power, Count? The blue blood of barbarian kings runs through your veins, but it gives you nothing here.” He reached up and grabbed Alucard’s cravat, pulling the knot and bowing his head. “The power never came from your own blood, did it? It came from _ours_.”

Alucard remembered that the Judas had slaughtered most of his original familiars. The janissaries and peasants and Wallachian soldiers, all gone. Dust to dust because of the priest. He knew these were lies, spat at him to make him angry; it was unfortunately working.

“You should be dead,” Alucard said, hostility making his upper lip curl back to show his canines. “You should have gotten a holy bayonet in the eye.”

Harker grinned. His gums sluggishly oozed black blood, like sludge. “You forgot about me, remember? Everyone else went out to play but I stayed within you. You forgot me just like you forgot Mina.” He cocked his head. “Too busy with your enslavement to remember ours?”

Alucard’s hands clenched at his sides, but he had fixed his face into one of nonchalance. “I don’t remember dogs.”

Black droplets sprayed from Harker’s mouth as he suppressed a mad giggle. “Did Abraham teach you that? Do you parrot it because its habit or did you actually pick up his theor – _IES_!”

His sentence ended with a shriek as Alucard cuffed him upside the head with the heel of his hand. In a scuffle between two humans it would have simply annoyed and disoriented the attacker, possibly sending pain shooting up into their eye socket. But Harker’s head practically caved in, the weakened, decaying bones of his skull on that side crumpling like paper under the wake of Alucard’s palm. His eye was compressed in its socket and popped.

Harker fell to his knees, blood and clear plasma flowing down his face. He screamed with laughter that slowly turned to guttural howling.

“You ignored us!” Harker cried, looking up at Alucard. The bones of his jaw clicked as they settled back into place, his face healing slowly. His remaining eye glared at him with burning hate. “You took my soul and did nothing with it, though my only crime was denying you your spoiled dreams! You _forgot_ me, though I was one of your greatest foes! And then you _took Mina and never let her go_!” The same kind of black sludge leaked from his eye. “You started a conquest of England for her! She rotted because of you – do you even know what they did to her!?”

Alucard covered Harker’s eye with his thumb and gripped his head. “I did not want to forget her,” he said softly. “She _begged_ me to.” Harker’s eye closed. His face relaxed slightly and his mouth quivered in grief. “She knew I had taken you within me and once she found out she begged me to forget I ever had. To forget you ever existed.” He tightened his hold on Harker’s skull. “What she did after that was never my concern. I caused her enough grief. I left her alone.”

He clenched his fist and crushed the top of Harker’s skull; the first familiar to die by his will. A shard of bone lodged in his palm and the body fell to the ground. Harker’s mouth gaped open, and he emitted a low  hiss before his body dissolved, leaving a curving, pitted ribcage and small mounds of dust. 

Delicately picking the bone out of the meatiest part of his palm, Alucard looked down at what was left of his familiar and sighed at the loss of a good enemy.

\--

Of course none of them waited for him in cars, like Harker had done. Some _hid_ in the cars, some _ambushed_ him from underneath the cars, but none waited. Not one of them went as willingly.

His new familiars were from London, most of them knew London like he didn’t. They found hiding places in the strangest ways; they hid underneath floorboards and inside cabinets; they dug themselves holes in their backyards and filled their mouths and noses with dirt; one hid inside a duvet cover and curled up on the floor. But they all reeked of the newly dead and decaying. Even with his powers dulled to near nonexistence, he could still smell them from out on the street. He could smell them through several layers of dirt and dig them up.

Very slowly, Alucard felt the effects of starvation. Time did not pass in the technical sense, but he was still using energy, still hunting and killing but never drinking. He tried to get something from a familiar, tearing at its already mangled neck, but it turned to dust in his mouth, making him cough and spit.

So streaks of grey appeared in his hair, albeit more slowly than usual. He couldn’t judge time by the rise and set of the sun because the sun never rose – he was trapped in an endless night that should have delighted him, but really it was just depressing. Frustrating. He estimated that it took months before the first hints of grey appeared, despite not having a single drop to drink.

But once he was aware that he was starving, he could not forget. There was no fresh blood to tempt him in this world, and he was weak to begin with. But slowly, Alucard’s mouth started to throb; his throat burned. An ache settled into his head.

He once had tried to leave the city, to perhaps walk to the Hellsing estate and at least have something like home to comfort him as he thirsted, but he had gotten maybe two steps passed the city limits before the pain in his gut had sent him to his knees and turned the world dark with its intensity. When it had faded, Alucard had found himself on the battlefield again, facing the sword, with the entity or familiar or whatever it was bearing down on the back of his neck and roaring like a demon.

At least the familiars were all trapped as he was. Millions of them within the city, all scrambling to hide from him, the ruthless, tireless Grim that stalked them in their own houses. As time went on, yes, their numbers dwindled and it got harder to find them, but Alucard found that they were confused; they didn’t know why they were here either. It should have become harder to find them as they spread out but really it was only easier.

They all remembered the invasion and some of them remembered their deaths, but they did not remember ever coming to this place or why this man was chasing them. They formed groups of families and friends, trying to push him back with sheer numbers, but he always overpowered them. They were weak, even against him.

So they started to hide.

Alucard broke down doors because he could not shift through them and searched for dead children in their boyhood closets; he slipped through the windows of hospitals and found the wounded and infirm that the Nazis had murdered in their beds. He held their wrists together when they fought and ripped out their throats with his teeth, dashed their heads upon walls as they screamed for mercy and answers. One little boy bit his hand hard enough to break the skin, and he reacted on instinct. Violent instinct.

 _Did you really need to do that to the poor kid?_ The Nazi youth boy taunted him wherever he went. He tried to shake him, running from one part of the city to another, tempting the attention of the entity that skulked the battlefield. But the little bastard always found him again, his features always a little clearer with each familiar he killed.

Of course Alucard tried to kill him. It never worked. Never stuck. He tried his best to ignore the Nazi boy but he was admittedly starting to get on Alucard’s nerves.

As Alucard’s hair turned completely grey, he felt like he had been stuck in this reality for an eternity. There was the passage of time and yet there was no way to explain it; the clocks were dead and the sun never rose. There was nothing to mark and nothing to suggest that the world even moved aside from the constant and never-ending progression of his own starvation – he and his familiars and the Nazi boy were all outside time and it made him want to scream.

He avoided the battlefield entirely. Alucard did not want to tempt that familiar, even when he wandered London aimlessly between killings, looking for another group; even when there seemed to be nothing else for years.

His hair turned white. His lips paled and drew back in a permanent snarl, exposing a red tongue and sickly, bloodless gums. Alucard found himself wanting to sleep even though the sun was not there to chase him away.

An eternity. An eternity of the hunt, the chase, the kill. It still thrilled him, but he was so used to it. The thrill was nothing special after experiencing it millions of times.

“I just want it to end,” Alucard begged, sprawled out on the long, russet red couch of a stranger’s apartment. Their remains dusted the floor in front of it, where he had ripped out their heart in a cruel fit of frustration. His hair pooled on the floor, silver and snow.

How easy would it be to just stay here? Give up and lie on this couch forever?

 _But what about the death you crave, Vampire King?_ The Nazi youth boy sat on the back of the couch, his boots resting on Alucard’s stomach. He ground his heels slightly into the nub of constant pain. _You cannot die here._

“This is close enough,” Alucard said, closing his eyes. There was silence. The Nazi boy did not breathe. Alucard could lie here forever and pretend he was in oblivion.

_What about your Jerusalem?_

Alucard grit his teeth. “God does not want me and I do not want him.”

 _You lie, Vampire King. You were a religious man in life. Religious men are weak men. They love their God and believe in their God and_ bow _to their God._

 _You are the king to vampires, the children of the night, the squalling babes of eternal life and death, but that is_ all _you will be king to. You traded God for power and even though you are practically omnipotent and near-immortal you still sought out a new God in Abraham and any human who showed the pride and courage that exists nowhere in you._

_So why deny that now?_

Opening his eyes, Alucard stared at the boy. He was not as comfortable as before. “God does not exist. I fought for Him for years; He never acknowledged me. He did not reward me. He didn’t even stop me from making the mistake of choosing this life.”

_You stuck nonbelievers on pikes and feasted in the shadows of their bodies. You did not exactly follow your Commandments._

“I was never destined to generate a new Jerusalem,” Alucard said finally, a snarl at the edge of his voice. “I have made my peace with it, why must you remind me? What do you gain from my progression?”

The Nazi boy smiled sweetly at him. _When you get out, so do I_. Crude fangs slipped over his bottom lip, smoky and indistinct – there were still familiars left and he hadn’t completely regained himself yet.

Instead of vanishing like he normally did, the boy slid off the couch, making sure to land on Alucard for a moment, and walked right out the door. He kicked his way through the puddle of ashes on the floor, spreading them around.

Alucard didn’t watch him go, instead closing his eyes again and trying to imagine the dead London as his own Jerusalem, the one he deserved; his personal rotten, god-less paradise.

\--

The entity found him even there.

Alucard knew he had been far from the battlefield, where that familiar usually stayed; from this part of London you couldn’t even see the perpetually burning corpse of the Major’s zeppelin.

He had been lying peacefully on that couch, which was rather comfortable in his opinion – its cushions had soaked up the smell of smoke, but it was soft and he didn’t mind the stink so much. He was usually too tall to fit comfortably on most couches, but this one was perfect. His head rested on one arm and he had crossed his ankles on the other. Alucard could sink into it and sleep for the rest of eternity, oddly warm for a change.

But then his blood started to rush; his peace was shattered. Alucard cracked open his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He sighed.

His stomach throbbed with pain as he stood, already missing the comfort, and faced the two windows in the apartment. They looked out into the street, and their cracked and broken panes rattled in their frames as the familiar approached, howling, roaring with constant rage and anger.

Alucard was in even less of a state to do battle with this enemy than at the beginning of this eternity. His hair was silver and grey and his bones were brittle. He tried to stand his ground and end this match here, but his instincts told him to run. Flee, Vampire King. Run away and continue your unlife and your struggle. This will not be the moment of your sunrise.

He turned tail and ran, cursing himself, self-loathing making the pain worse.

The familiar caught him.

A graceless yelp was torn from his throat as Alucard was jerked back by a fist snarling in his hair. The rest of his body carried on briefly from the momentum of his run, while his head and neck stayed in place, like a dog caught at the end of its chain. Alucard rounded on the familiar, shaking loose its hold and snarling like a demon, prepared to go down and take whoever he had eaten with him into the fiery pit.

Is face froze in that snarl, his eyes widening.

Alucard partook in the metaphysical experience of looking at himself.

His armor was a little less tarnished, his cloak a little less tattered; the Wallachian prince had fewer lines around his mouth than he did at the end of his life and the beginning of his unlife, but he was almost the same.

The shine of religious zealotry was in his eyes, turning them hard and angry against Alucard.

Dracula curled the hand that had gripped Alucard’s hair close to his chest, the plates of his gauntlet scraping together. He looked away from Alucard to consider it, and then his eyes flicked back. “Heathen.” He brought the hand down to his other side, wrapping his fingers around the hilt of his broadsword.

He swung at Alucard, the sword out of his scabbard and in the air faster than Alucard expected. Too fast for a human. Alucard had to leap back to avoid having it slice his head off. He knew that sword as well as he knew the Jackal and the Casull. He knew its might; it would only take one shot to cut through the muscle and bone of his neck, as it had done to the Ottomans.

Alucard actually panicked. He had expected a familiar. He didn’t know how a familiar could be as powerful as it had felt, but that’s what he has _expected_. He had wandered London with the express purpose of avoiding a _familiar_. He was shaken and trembling and _afraid_ as the warrior of God advanced on him, pressing him further into the small alcove kitchen the apartment had, where there were no windows; no way of escape. He was letting himself become the victim of one of the most basic tactical strategies of war – corner your enemy.

“Demon.” Dracula brought the blade high over his head. Alucard remembered cleaving the skulls of janissaries with that sword with a mad grin on his face, but Dracula’s expression was serious, with only a hint of his religious passion showing at the corners of his mouth and in the flare of his nostrils.

Just barely missing the downward strike, Alucard frantically searched for something to use against this new enemy. He would not be able to pierce that armor with his fingertips, not in his current state. He wasn’t even sure if he could harm Dracula with anything he found in the kitchen of an English dentist, but he had to try.

A knife rack. Dracula attempted to kick his legs out from under him, or break his knees as Alucard had done to the Dandy. Alucard just barely avoided the attack, his body sluggish and weak, his limbs trembling from hunger. He jumped up onto the kitchen counter, reaching for the rack and grabbing the closest handle.

It was a fucking steak knife.

Crouching on the counter, Alucard gripped the small serrated knife until his hand shook, his knuckles standing out. He searched madly for an opening in the prince’s armor, trying to remember the weak points. The soft crease of the inside of his elbows and the bundles of tendons at the backs of his knees were not covered by armor for mobility. But Alucard remembered the heavy chainmail underneath his plate. The steak knife was small, but not small enough to slip through the links.

His neck. The thick vein of Dracula’s jugular was exposed.

_“Monster.”_

Dracula raised the sword again, and Alucard was trapped against the cabinets and the jutting pantry. But Alucard let out a victorious howl and dove for his neck, snaking passed the swinging steel and slashing at the warrior’s throat with the knife.

He was only able to make a small cut, but blood welled to the surface none the less. Red, hot blood that drove Alucard mad, and instead of continuing the battle he latched onto the cut and lapped at it, desperate for it. He collected what little blood there was on his tongue, savoring it, not yet swallowing it.

Opening his mouth to bite down, to sink his fangs into the warrior’s neck and have him as his meal, Alucard stopped as the pain in his stomach exploded.

Dracula had stabbed him through the belly.

Alucard let out a surprised _oh_ and clutched at the blade. His own precious blood was slowly leaking over the harsh steel, though he could still taste the prince’s blood on his tongue. He fell.

Drawing the sword out of him with a _shink_ , Dracula looked down at Alucard as he lay curled up on the floor. Blood ran through the cracks in the tiles. “A man of God suffers no distractions,” he said, holding the sword with both hands, point down, reading himself to ram it through Alucard’s neck.

Swallowing the blood in his mouth, Alucard felt it travel all the way through his esophagus, the only heat within him. It warmed him to the tips of his fingers. He stopped shaking from pain and hunger, at least for a moment.

The sword came down onto the floor, splitting a tile in two. Alucard rolled out of the way, rocking forward onto his feet and launching himself away from the Impaling Prince. He ran with long strides, trying to get himself as far away from this place and his shame possible. He heard Dracula yelling after him, calling him a demon, a heathen cursed with the Devil’s gifts and his cowardice.

Alucard didn’t leap out the window this time, but instead took the stairs, jumping them three at a time, his hand pressing to the wound in his stomach. His fingers became slick with blood, and he was rapidly losing the burst of energy he had gained from what had to be a paradox or sorts.

He kept expecting to hear the warrior barreling down after him, but even when Alucard got to the first floor and the building’s lobby, it was silent. Dracula had decided not to chase him.

The wound in his stomach used the last of his energy to heal, knitting together and leaving a hole in his suit, letting the white flesh of his belly reveal his cowardice to everyone. Alucard drew his coat around him in an attempt to hide the tear that he didn’t have the energy to mend, and walked away from his enemy, who had deemed him unworthy of the hunt and the chase.

\--

“You lied to me,” Alucard told the Nazi’s quantum cat, wiping the ash of another familiar off his hands. “You said it was a familiar. I don’t even know what it is.”

He left out the part where he didn’t know what he was. If the Wallachian prince in his purest form existed there and then who was he, the unnatural monster? What was Alucard if he was not also Dracula? How could they be separate, when Alucard remembered being able to release to Zero and ride as the warrior once more, and then lock back up and continue on as the Count?

_You cannot remember yourself, Vampire King._

Of course. The little hellish bastard was still in his head.

Alucard held back a growl at the invasion of his thoughts, too weak to even block the boy out. The Nazi youth grinned at him with teeth that were mostly solid. A sign that his struggle was nearing an end. “So what of it?”

_You must kill him._

“I cannot kill him,” Alucard snapped, bringing his heel down on the floorboards of the house they were in. The wood had burned and went out long before London had frozen, and it crumbled underneath his pitiful reserves of strength. The familiar inside, a teenage girl, shrieked and begged from below. He jumped inside and broke her neck.

Climbing back out, Alucard saw the Nazi boy leaning against a wall, looking smug. “What is it?” Alucard asked.

 _The last of them have gathered near Nelson’s Column. They are going to try and fight you._ The cat ears folded against the side of his head as he grinned maliciously, his eyes narrow in mirth. _I am sure you will run from this threat as you have all the others. Without the strength of an army at your back or within you, you are weak._

Alucard hadn’t attempted to kill the boy in a while, so the Nazi youth was caught off guard when he swiped at him in anger. The boy danced back, his ears pricked up and forward, his eyes wide as if they had been having good, innocent fun.

He did not pursue the boy when he vanished. Alucard stared at the wall where the Nazi cat had been leaning, contemplating his words. This could be the last struggle; the few steps until he was able to get to the top of the hill and

And what?

Fight Dracula? Fight and kill _himself_? Return to the mortal world where there he would truly be omnipotent, unable to die because he would always recognize himself?

That brought with it its usual stab of misery in his cold, dead heart, but Alucard was used to knowing he couldn’t die. God had denied him his Jerusalem and had cursed him with eternal life for his sins; now he could murder until the end of time.

Or perhaps not.

Alucard continued forward, walking towards Trafalgar Square. How dramatic.

There were about thirty of them, though the threat of their numbers was slightly offset by the fact that a handful of then shrieked in fear when Alucard appeared at the west end of the Mall, a bright red figure walking below the tattered remains of the Union Jack. Though admittedly Alucard did not find himself as intimidating since he had lost most of his grandeur to lack of blood, a starving vampire was a frightening sight. He was a thin, pale specter, with a mouth full of fangs and eyes that burned hellishly bright.

“What are you?” cried one of them, a man whose terracotta colored skin was turning blue at his jaw. His throat had been torn open and his dress shirt was brown and crusted with blood from the bullet holes in his chest. He stepped forward, the man to face the monster that day. “Why are you doing this?”

Alucard was breathing. Harshly. He stood there, his stance wide to steady his haggard body. His head pounded.

“Are you dense?” Alucard said, softly, looking down and away from the group. The last struggle. He had made his decision. His Jerusalem was over the horizon and he could almost see it. “You are all _dead_. You died in this stinking pit and never stopped walking. I am giving you _peace_!” His yell echoed, his desperate attempt to give this entire massacre a meaning, like he wasn’t killing them with a cruel, selfish intent.

 _There is nothing left for them,_ he thought. It was a simple concept he had known for centuries – they were dead and gone and killing them would be a mercy. He had taught it to Seras and it was a great boon to her.

He still felt like scum.

The crowd huddled around the Column, hiding behind the lions as if that would save them. They cringed away from him as he advanced. There were children huddling around the legs of people who may or may not have been their parents. They all stared at him as if he was a devil coming up to earth, something he had once reveled in and was now sick of.

The hunt and the chase just made him so tired now.

They tried to stand their ground, slashing at him with makeshift weapons, plunging sharpened pieces of shrapnel into his sides. Alucard flinched away from their hands, plunging into their group and killing them as quickly as he could. He plunged his stiff fingers into their necks and chests, worming his fingers into bullet wounds and bite marks, desperate to kill them as efficiently as possible. He was running up the last hill and the muscles in his thighs burned.

He worked his way to the last one, the man who had spoken first.

“Why are you –!?”

Alucard stabbed him through the chest and gripped his cold heart, feeling for himself that they had all been dead for years, that this was indeed a mercy kill.

He stood amongst the lions the guarded the Column, ashes around his feet. Thirty some piles of ashes. Alucard took two steps to the base and sat down at it.

London was quiet. He looked at the skyline that had burned for several eternities and realized that it had never been empty. It had just been devoid of the people he wanted; it had been full of the remains of humans, who had found each other and lived with each other while he hunted them down.

 _Mercy killing mercy killing there was nothing for them here mercy killing._ Alucard rested at the top of his hill, looking down on his new Jerusalem, holding his head in his hands and feeling millions of deaths crashing down on him in a hard, hot wave of self-loathing.

 _What’s the matter, Alucard?_ The youth was sitting on one of the lions, looking as if he was waiting for it to come alive so that he could ride it into battle. _I thought you liked killing? Murder seems like your favorite hobby._

Alucard shook his head. “It’s just too many. I am glad it’s over.” Blood pooled underneath him from the gashes in his sides. He was surprised at the amount; he was sure he was close to drying up and becoming a husk. But perhaps that couldn’t be done here.

_You still have –_

“Yes, I _know_.”

He uncurled and started down the hill, leaving blood in his wake.

\--

Alucard walked down the long road to the main battlefield, walking passed the crashed zeppelins, the destroyed buildings. He remembered touching down there, amongst the Catholics, and watching the Judas die there ( _ah_ the writhing heart in his fist), and there was where Walter appeared.

And there was the sword, its shadow still reaching out and flickering in the source light of the fires.

Alucard’s senses were dulled by starvation, and he didn’t notice Dracula until he was several meters away. The prince tensed when Alucard looked at him, his stance automatically switching to a wide, defensive one. The broadsword was already in his hands, held in front of him, so tuned to Alucard that it was nearly two-dimensional.

“You’re bleeding,” Dracula said, his eyes flicking quickly to the drops of blood that had appeared at Alucard’s feet.

“I know,” Alucard said softly. He tried to clear his throat and speak again, but it came out the same. A pitiful whisper.

“Have you come to accept your death?”

His answer to that question had always been to scoff. Laugh in his opponent’s face; he had chosen immortality when would he ever accept death? He _taunted_ Death, danced around It, swooped down to kiss the bastard on the lips and then ran from It.

Alucard had conquered Death better than any man before him, surpassing his humanity and brushing the tips of his fingers against true immortality. He was a god on Earth, filled with enough power to rend countries; on some nights, during the high of the kill, he couldn’t even tell himself apart from his enemies or the souls within him. He had become man’s Death in corporeal form, leashed only by a single woman with a hand twisted in his chain.

He was so tired though.

Five hundred years and then some, never being granted the final sleep. Living with his mistakes and his sins, his own near immortality one of the biggest of them all, the result of that one moment of weakness in faith. His masters had been the ones to keep him going - his God, Son, and Holy Spirit - each one carrying out the sentence given to him.

There was a flash of black and red at one of the windows in the building Alucard had fled to at the beginning of this reality. His head twitched slightly, looking out of the corner of his eyes to see the quantum cat staring down at them, a wide smile on his face. He expected Alucard to leap up and fight the warrior, revel in this new enemy who must be worthy. He _wanted_ Alucard to fight the Wallachian prince and get them out of this hell.

This was just one more test, and Alucard was determined to make it the last. God had sent Abraham to gauge whether or not he was ready to die – he had recoiled away from it that time, accepted servitude over death. _Anything but that._ But a century was enough to change him, enough to beat him down until his back was hunched and aching.

Next to his master’s sword, Alucard sank to his knees. He bowed his head, his hair parting and showing the white flash of his neck. The knob of the base of his neck stood prominent.

He was ready for death; Alucard was done taunting It.

The only other two entities left in this world paused, one in confusion, the other in rage. Dracula considered the vampire kneeling before him, his face still serious but his eyes curious. He had thought the demon would put up a fight; the question had been rhetorical, something to start the battle. But now it had rolled over and showed its belly and was waiting for him to put it out of its miserable existence. The warrior would do so with a sense of duty – there was no sense in torturing the poor heathen.

The Nazi boy screamed in anger. “What are you doing!? You fought wars for years and spilt unnecessary amounts of blood and _now_ you decide to roll over and give up!? You never gave up before and _now you do_!? You can’t fucking die here you son of a bitch _get up get up and fight_!” His screaming reminded him of Integra’s, her ordering him not to leave, not to fade into this hell and him not listening and letting it take him.

Neither of the men down on the battlefield acknowledged the boy. Alucard did not care, and the Wallachian prince was deep in concentration. He did not want to cause the pitiful creature any more pain – a nice clean slice.

The sword was high over the warrior’s head, its blade wavering and a hot orange from the reflection light of the surrounding fires. Dracula’s armor gleamed and flickered. His body was stretched tall and imposing, the sword just an extension of his height.

His neck was exposed.

Alucard’s head flicked up and revealed his grin. His knee was to his chest, his legs were curled underneath him; he was perfectly posed to surge upwards. Quicker than he thought possible, Alucard wrapped his fingers around his master’s sword, feeling a strong jolt of energy fly up his arm. He ripped it from the pavement, its tip pitted and scratched but the point still deadly and the blade still sharp. He brought it up and shoved it into the warrior’s stomach, passing through the armor like smoke, making Dracula scream. Alucard cackled madly, truly God’s might in this empty London.

Moving as fast as he could, Alucard pulled the blade from his stomach and swiped at the warrior’s neck. The blade went through his flesh unnaturally easy, like it had his armor; Dracula was a weak doll, a parallel to the real thing. He did not slice cleanly through, the pitted tip faltering on the thick column of his spine, but the damage was done. Blood gushed, obscuring the ridge of bone at the back of the cut, not the healthy, human red it had been before, but the deep black sludge of a long-dead familiar. The warrior let out a low gurgle, the broadsword suddenly too heavy for him, pulling his arms backwards until his grip loosened and it fell.

The warrior fell to dust, but the sludge on Integra’s sword remained. Alucard brought it up to his mouth; it was the first time a familiar had left anything after dying its final death.

His long tongue snaked out. The Nazi boy was running up to him, smiling. Cheerfully without a hint of malice on his face. “You did it! We can go back!”

Alucard licked at the black blood. It was sticky like syrup, and made him cringe, but it gave him his energy back. His hair turned grey in a wave, and he straightened up, feeling immeasurably better.

With the last ‘familiar’ dead, this reality started to break. The fires died down, hissing as the sky opened up and it started to drizzle. The zeppelin faded away. The destroyed buildings were replaced. He heard voices; London during the dawn rush hour.

 _Ah! The dawn!_ Alucard’s head swiveled towards the east, his eyes searching frantically. Maybe this could possibly be that moment. Perhaps he would be granted the slice of the sun and the knowledge that this world was not fading into London, but perhaps his true perdition. Perhaps this had been his test and maybe he had passed.

Of course not. The sky over London was heavy and overcast and dark with the long dark of a winter night. He could smell the frost and snow in the air and the drizzle was a wet sleet.

Alucard sighed. Of course not. His endless night was not yet at an end. He was ready for death, but he did not deserve it. He would not receive it.

The quantum cat was at his side, beaming and saying something. Alucard didn’t listen, instead focusing on the steady beat of his heart and the low rush of blood in his veins. The Nazi cat hesitated, his ears going back, his smile fading.

Alucard bared his teeth in a hungry grin. “I killed all the familiars.”

“Yes…”

People had begun to appear around them, brushing by them and not seeing them. They were as incorporeal and lifeless as ghosts.

“All but one.”

The humans of London solidified around him, most of them too caught up in their rush to notice the figure in bright red appear from invisible numbers and an invisible reality.

Alucard found himself surrounded by humans, his eyes closing in happiness at the sounds of their breathing and heartbeats. He could hear conversations around him; there were actual people, alive and very very human. They brushed against him, jostling him from side to side in their rush, murmuring apologies as they hurried to catch trains and buses and meet deadlines.

He was still clutching the memory of his master’s sword, even though it had been left in the other world. His hand loosened as he remembered. _I have to go to her,_ Alucard thought. He knew she was still alive – he could sense her, and Seras. Together. He knew he could trust Seras to keep her safe.

He was already there with them. Alucard was standing there, in London, a smudge of blood red amongst the dull business blacks and greys, but he was also with his master, already with his fledgling; he was everywhere. He was also back in perdition; he was nowhere.

Shaking himself, Alucard reined in his new familiar. He was just standing there with sleet in his hair. That was something that would take getting used to, but he had eternity to master it. At the moment he had one goal: to get to Integra. It would be simple to simply be there, but that was far too easy.

The rising sun at his back, Alucard began to walk towards the Hellsing mansion, his Heavenly Jerusalem.


End file.
